


Guarded Promise

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-19 12:19:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14873630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: It’s Tatsuya's job as the older brother to not only reassure his younger brother, but to back up that reassurance. Whatever it takes.





	Guarded Promise

**Author's Note:**

> sequel to [Home Soon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11169258)
> 
> aka the one where kagahimu are actually brothers but also dating

The sun is low in the sky as Tatsuya makes his way back home, schoolbag slung over his shoulder and a can of soda in his hand. Practice had been particularly tough today, and though the days have been getting shorter for some time today feels as if he’s missed everything and that the only thing that exists in his world is basketball. Though he used to think that would be enough, it always came with Taiga attached, and now, while Taiga is still in middle school, it feels like there’s not enough room in his life.

Taiga will be at home, though, in the apartment they share, starting on dinner and waiting for help with his homework. Tatsuya’s exhausted body offers a halfhearted protest as he speeds up the walk back from the train station.

The sound and smell of frying vegetables greets Tatsuya as he opens the door. Leaning on the doorframe, he pulls off his shoes.

“I’m back.”

“Welcome back,” says Taiga, none of the usual enthusiasm in his voice, and Tatsuya’s heart plummets like an elevator whose pulleys have snapped.

His first thought is that Taiga’s come ot the realization that he doesn’t want this, the fragile thing that exists between them, to exist anymore. He’s thought about it and he wants out, because they’re brothers or because Tatsuya is himself or because of some charming little middle school kid. He bites the inside of his lip; it’s mostly his own insecurities that have gotten in the way of the two of them before and he’s not going to leap into assumptions while they’re dragging him down like this. It could be a difficult math problem; it could be those shitty kids in his school basketball club again. Maybe he’s just homesick for LA or their dad again.

“What’s up?” Tatsuya says, coming into the kitchen.

Taiga’s facing the stove, sweat on his neck from the proximity to the heat, sleeves rolled up and showing off his forearms, built to lift frying pans and throw down dunks.

“Dad’s coming for a job in two weeks.”

Oh. “Shit.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” says Taiga. “We’re going to have to—I don’t know.”

Tatsuya breathes in and walks over to the stove, raising his hand to touch the small of Taiga’s back. He plants a soft kiss on Taiga’s cheek.

Hiding their relationship from Tatsuya’s teammates is, relatively speaking, easy. They don’t know Taiga; nor do they know the physical boundaries that have or haven’t existed between them before they were together. There’s a certain leeway, too, that comes with being foreign, a reasonable amount of looking or casual touching that can be passed off as how they do things in the states. They haven’t seen their father in six months, since the three of them were all living together in another country, but that doesn’t explain a shift to the kind of casual affection they either haven’t had or haven’t had since they were awfully young, and stuff that he full well knows isn’t normal for American brothers to do.

“How long's he going to be here?”

“Just the week,” says Taiga.

Tatsuya breathes out. “We’ll be fine, Taiga.”

Still resting the wooden spoon in the frying pan, Taiga twists his head to look straight at Tatsuya. “You really think?”

“I know," says Tatsuya. “I promise.”

* * *

It’s Tatsuya's job as the older brother to not only reassure his younger brother, but to back up that reassurance, whatever it takes, and to never betray Taiga’s trust or confidence. He’s already failed too many times, and this—the risk of their father finding them out—is much more precarious than even his role guiding Taiga through basketball, stepping first and staying ahead. It’s crucial that they keep this under wraps.

It helps a little that they’ve been going slow, a dragged-out courtship of at-home dinner dates, touches and kisses and colliding physical space that stop escalating much too soon for Tatsuya to be satisfied. But it’s important to walk this line together, to balance books on their head slowly. They are careful, even in their own home—but perhaps that makes it hurt more that both of them are making a conscious attempt to not engage, to withdraw. To sit on opposite ends of the couch, for Tatsuya, after getting so used to brushing against Taiga or touching his hand, to stick his hands in his pocket instead. When Taiga looks as if he’s about to make a move and kiss Tatsuya, but thinks the better of it. (At least they still kiss each other good morning; at least they still text each other; at least they still say I love you).

There’s a basketball game in the middle of the week and extended practice on Monday; that’s enough to keep Tatsuya out of trouble for two out of the five days. Though, leaving Taiga alone to deal with potentially awkward questions about all the things that could go wrong—too many of Taiga’s things in what’s supposed to be Tatsuya’s bedroom only, their father’s eyes falling on the wrong discarded sticky note or text message, one of them having said or done something Sunday evening or in the morning that had seemed strange. When they were young, it was always Taiga their father asked, and always Taiga who had ended up spilling the beans on whatever it is they had done that they weren’t supposed to (until Tatsuya had stepped in to claim total responsibility and bear the brunt of the punishment).

Maybe he’ll be too jet-lagged to notice.

* * *

Their father arrives after dinner on Sunday evening, tired but full of the same questions he’s been asking them over the phone since he’d left. How is school, are they making friends and getting along okay, do they have enough to eat. He’s still satisfied with their answers, and apologizes again for being unable to join them permanently.

This time, Tatsuya means the brush-offs and reassurances he gives.

The morning is quiet, a little awkward, and Tatsuya’s trying not to think about Taiga holding him around the waist while he puts bread in the toaster, or kissing Taiga’s neck while he fries eggs. He chugs his coffee to avoid speaking, and nudges Taiga’s foot under the table with his own. Taiga cracks a quick and feeble smile.

Tatsuya pays at least half the requisite attention during his morning classes, but he has to actively not try and daydream about Taiga. It’s worse than before they got together; he doesn’t have plausible deniability anymore. He has the feeling of Taiga’s kisses on his mouth, Taiga’s fingers in his hair, lying with his head on Taiga’s chest. He wants Taiga, from across town. He’s fucking spoiled and entitled thinking like this; it’s just the rest of the week, a handful of days when touching and kissing Taiga won’t be an option.

He stuffs it back down, reads aloud when it’s his turn, and texts Taiga a simple thanks after he eats his lunch bento. He still has afternoon classes and then practice, and that ought to be enough to get him to focus on other things.

* * *

Taiga goes to bed early Tuesday night; Tatsuya hopes it’s not stress from all this wearing down on him. He ruffles Taiga’s hair and hugs him close when he passes by; before anything else he’s always Taiga’s big brother and right now he’s only doing this as Taiga’s big brother. From the only simple chamber of his heart (though loving Taiga, as complicated as it makes everything, has always been simple and intuitive in every way; it’s more natural than basketball ever has been).

Tatsuya’s father clears his throat after the door shuts; Tatsuya raises his head, looking back, steady. His father sighs.

“I’m sorry. I know you’ve been busy this week, but if you’re avoiding me because you’re mad, I get it, too. I haven’t been around for you two as much as I’ve wanted or as much as you deserve, and saddled you with responsibilities. I know you can handle them, but that wasn’t fair of me.”

Tatsuya blinks. “Dad, no—I’ve had so much with basketball and school; I’d love to be spending more time with you and Taiga this week. And—you know, we’ve been doing this for months. We’re okay. We love you, and we’re not mad.”

His father smiles. “Taiga said the same, but—I did mean to come with you, you know.”

“I know," says Tatsuya. “It’s okay, Dad.”

Guilt is pushing at his smile from behind; the weight of all the little secrets and the shape they take up press forward and Tatsuya swallows them back down into his stomach. He can’t say; as much as it hurts for his father to think he’s been avoiding him because he’s mad, as much as the misunderstanding could have been avoided, better that than letting him know everything. Better to let him hurt a little than for him to know, potentially view Taiga as something ugly and disturbed and wrong—if it were only him, Tatsuya would shoulder it alone. He’d be okay with the weight of it, maybe (that’s not true, but a hypothetical that will never be true, so it’s safe to lie about it to himself and make things go down easier).

“You're doing a good job taking care of Taiga. He’s happy; he’s doing better in school than I’d expected considering the language barrier.”

Tatsuya swallows. Tutoring Taiga on the kanji he’s mostly been bullshitting his way through was as much to teach him as to teach Taiga; sometimes it feels like he’s forgotten more and can’t catch up. He swallows that back down, too.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Don’t forget to do things for you, too,” says his dad. “Not just basketball or school. Okay?”

Again, something rises to Tatsuya’s throat, but it lodges itself there like a pill swallowed the wrong way. He nods.

* * *

The basketball game is on Thursday, and up to the moment it starts it’s the only thing Tatsuya can focus on and feel slightly sane. All the second and third and fourth thoughts clustered on his shoulder like birds on a wire are seeping back into his mind; their voices grow louder and Tatsuya can’t hold them back. They’re brothers and this is wrong; they’re just going to have to hide this forever if it keeps going; he can’t do this to Taiga. All of the things he’d pushed back with—Taiga’s happy; it feels so damn good; he wants this—are suddenly too feeble. He falls asleep holding Taiga; he wakes up and has to withdraw himself for the whole day, suppress his instincts when it doesn’t feel good or triumphant to succeed.

He closes his eyes and wills his eyelids to look like the plays drawn up by Coach on the inside, wills his ears to drown out the bad thoughts with a recitation of when he’s supposed to guard his man, when he’s supposed to jump out and twist away, where he’s given free reign. Imagining the smack of the ball on the floor or the screech of rubber soles on the waxed boards, Tatsuya holds back the onslaught. Now is not the time.

Taiga comes to all of Tatsuya’s games. This one won’t be different, but Tatsuya doesn’t scan the stands for him. He can’t. He convinces himself Taiga’s gone back home to make dinner for Dad, or that he’s too far back. He tries not to think about Taiga, but even focusing on the court in front of him isn’t working. He blinks, pulling his practice shirt over his head, and then he’s imagining Taiga pulling off his shirt in the heat of summer and, fuck. Tatsuya wrenches it off, tosses it onto his chair, and joins his teammates.

He glances at the crowd, and there’s a flash of red, and there’s Taiga, grinning at him like he knows Tatsuya sees. Tatsuya wants to challenge him one on one right here; he wants to steal Taiga away and go somewhere, just the two of them. He reels his thoughts all the way back in and nods at Coach.

Taiga’s here, and he can’t say anything or do anything, and this should be the same as every other game Taiga’s come to watch. It is, in a way; Tatsuya’s stomach is curled tight like a cat outside sticking close to the heat seeping out of the wall. He wants to make Taiga proud; he wants to make Taiga look at him even more; he wants to impress Taiga the way Taiga impresses him every time he plays. He wants to make it look effortless and unattainable; he wants to seem invincible, someone who’s good enough to beat Taiga at this moment but someone Taiga wants to play with, too.

He wants, drawing on the bottomless well of desire inside of him, for this, for Taiga, for all of it. As he always does, but he’s drawing on extra frustration, not just the frustration of falling further behind Taiga but not being able to be with him the way he should, making him stressed around their father. It’s a feeling, like a secondary frequency of electricity, like he's a radio receiver transmitting two channels at once.

They lose the tipoff, but Tatsuya’s center grabs the rebound off the first shot and passes it back to him. Tatsuya passes it to the open swingman at the post, but the other team’s too quick; he passes back. Tatsuya doesn’t have much room or the best angle, but he’s too impatient to set up anything better. And, in this moment, he trusts himself with the basketball.

He’s never done the mirage shot perfectly before, but this time he knows as soon as his fingers stop feeling the ball, as soon as it lifts. It winks out of sight and then reappears, falling through the hoop; Tatsuya’s teammates are slapping his back and asking him what the fuck that was and all Tatsuya’s focused on is Taiga’s face in the stands.

* * *

Taiga’s smile is glowing like a traffic light at dusk, luminous on his face in the early evening, too bright for the shadows that surround them, too bright for Tatsuya to lean over and kiss. He holds Taiga’s hand; they’re walking close together and their schoolbags bump and that’s enough to make anyone who might see them just a little unsure of what they see.

“That first shot,” Taiga says again, like thinking about it sucks out all his breath.

Tatsuya’s heart takes an extra beat and his veins spark. He squeezes Taiga’s hand; he’s never had a small ego but Taiga’s said this at least five times and Tatsuya’s nowhere near close to tired of hearing it. Taiga squeezes his hand back and looks at him, casting the brightness of his smile on Tatsuya.

They’ve still got another day until their dad goes back home and they can do all the things they want to, stretch out their limbs in their own home. But is getting something as good as this, as much more as he could have, settling? Even for someone as greedy as Tatsuya, it’s not.

**Author's Note:**

> tatsuya's thoughts are dramatic but he's like 15 lmao


End file.
